Uncut
by LadyRhiyana
Summary: In which the Author, in cleaning out her fanfic closet, cannot bear to cull the unfinished snippets and so posts them anyway. Warnings ahead for drabbles, fragments and unfinished ideas. Will no doubt be added to in the future.
1. The Hunt for Jin-ei (unfinished)

**The Hunt for Jin-ei (unfinished)  
****Disclaimer: **I don't own Ruroken, any of the canon characters, situations or settings.  
**A/N – **So, in cleaning out my work in progress folder, I came across this unfinished ficlet in the Last Honourable Man universe. It dates all the way back to 2007 – so I am finally posting it, in all its unfinished glory, because otherwise it will never see the light of day.

* * *

1.

The CCTV images are grainy and unfocused. On the computer screen before them, Kenshin watches Kurogasa Jin-ei slaughter a party of Ishin Shishi mid-rankers partying in a downtown Tokyo brothel. The signature two-gun technique is instantly recognisable, if over-flamboyant; equally recognisable is the blood-maddened overkill as Kurogasa turns on the terrified prostitutes and the cowering staff.

"He killed everyone." Beside him, one of the Ishin Shishi's techno-geeks is ghostly pale and sweating. "Hunted them down and shot them even as they begged."

"He is a mad dog," Katsura-san says gravely. "And like a mad dog, he must be put down without mercy." He looks at Kenshin. "Kurogasa thought to escape my retribution by fleeing Japan, but we have tracked him down to New York.

"Find him, Himura, and kill him."

* * *

2.

Two Japanese swords – the traditional _daisho_ – lie carefully sheathed and bound on a silk cloth. There is nothing especially remarkable about them – no ornate decorations or engraving, no sense of great history or worth. They are, if anything, functional rather than ceremonial: the black lacquered sheaths are chipped in places, and the sharkskin wrapping on their hilts shows signs of wear.

The customs agents at JFK don't know what to make of them. The young Japanese man who brought them with him to New York currently waits in another room, an interpreter by his side.

"Gifts, he says." Carefully, O'Reilly unbinds the peace-knot, grips the wrapped, braided hilt of the _katana, _drawing partway from the sheath to reveal the blade. "For his cousin."

His partner, Wosczinski, keeps an eye on the security monitor, watching their calm, impassive suspect. "Do you believe it?"

"Not for a moment." Curious, O'Reilly runs his finger along the edge of the blade. "Shit!" He jerks his hand back, hissing, and sticks his bleeding finger in his mouth. "This thing is razor-sharp!" Then something catches his eye – he frowns, and draws the blade out further. "Hey, look at this."

The light ripples on the blue-grey steel, the metal hammered and folded thousands upon thousands of times to form the long, elegant blade. The edge – as O'Reilly had found – is so sharp it could cut the wind itself. But look close enough, and marks of tiny nicks and indentations can be seen.

"I don't like this," Wosczinski says. "Check the databases. Run his name and face. Let's see who this Himura Kenshin really is."

* * *

3.

The interpreter – a young, clean-cut American in a business suit – tries to draw Kenshin into light conversation. His Japanese is quite good; he spent five years living in Japan, he says, after he finished university.

Kenshin is in no mood to talk. He answers in monosyllables, his mind on the mission, on the American contacts who were supposed to be here at the airport to smooth his way through customs. Instead his contacts had not shown, and customs agents had taken his swords and were taking far too long in returning them. Katsura-san had advised him to leave his _daisho _in Kyoto, had told him that weapons could easily be procured in New York without arousing undue suspicion. But Kenshin would not abandon his swords, though it might endanger the mission and bring him to the notice of the authorities.

Security tapes, he had said, can be stolen or wiped. Witnesses can be silenced. But swords are not so easily replaced.

Finally the customs agents return, their faces serious. Kenshin feels his heart sink – he had hoped to complete this assassination and return to Japan as quickly as possible. He does not want to cut his way through to the streets outside the airport, but if the American authorities detain him he will be left with no choice. Katsura-san had ordered Kurogasa's death, and Kenshin will let nothing stand in the way of his mission.

* * *

4.

Afterwards, he washes his hands and face in the staff kitchenette, carefully blotting away the pink-tinged runnels of water with a paper towel. He wipes the rooms down with bleach, ignoring the burn and sting of the acrid fumes, and then looks up at the security cameras.

A small line appears between his brows.

He catches up his swords and heads for the security control centre.

* * *

5.

The blood dripping from the security guards slumped over their consoles in the control centre distracts him a little. It takes longer for him to call Katsura's techno-geeks to talk him through wiping the tapes than it did to track the control centre down, kick the door in and gain access to the servers.

He manages, though he has to wipe the soles of his shoes before he leaves the room.

* * *

6.

Finally he steps out of the airport and into New York. He takes a moment to absorb the sounds of the street; the noise and bustle has a different flavour to Tokyo or Kyoto. Street kid, gutter brat, he enjoys the energy and the rush, at least until the blare of a car horn brings him back to the present.

He flags down a passing taxi and hands the driver a business card with a written address. His English is very poor, but the driver speaks to him all the way to his destination, not caring that Kenshin makes no response. Finally the cab deposits him on a corner in Chinatown, and an ancient grandmother knitting in a rocking chair on a second-floor balcony nods towards a tiny Japanese restaurant.

This, then, is the Ishin Shishi headquarters in New York. Tiny bells ring, announcing his presence when he enters through the front door, but no one comes out to greet him, though he can hear voices and laughter in the kitchen. Annoyed, he slips through the curtain separating the kitchen from the main restaurant, his hand playing restlessly along the sheath of his katana. He has killed six men already today, and the Shishi who were supposed to welcome him at the airport were here, laughing and playing cards. They were speaking in English, he noted irritably. Third or fourth generation, most of them, their Japanese only half-remembered from ancient grandparents and childhood anime.

No matter. Their vows had just become real.

He slips up to the table, stepping out of the shadows as if he had suddenly appeared from nowhere. They curse and fly up out of their chairs, hands going to big flashy guns at their waists – he stares them all down, a stark figure in a dusty black coat, his golden-brown eyes hard and dangerous.

When he speaks, he does so in Japanese. They must all follow as well as they can.

* * *

7.

Chinatown is bright, gaudy, busy, and even late at night there are enough Asian students with dyed red-brown hair that his own natural shade is not unusual. He dislikes dying his hair black, some part of him still believing the old superstitions regarding demons and red hair; more practically, it takes forever to wash out and with his pale skin makes him look Gothic. He does, however, cover the scar on his cheek with careful make-up.

Kurogasa Jin-ei is a formidable foe. The Ishin techno-geeks had tracked Kurogasa to New York, but could give him no more specific information; hence the American Shishi, who were now out on foot, asking questions, doing the round of bars, clubs and restaurants.

Kenshin knows that the word will soon spread that justice has come for Jin-ei. Surely he had not thought that Katsura-san's reach so short; even if there had not been an Ishin Shishi off-shoot based in New York, Kenshin would have tracked him down to the ends of the Earth. Jin-ei was a rampaging murderous dog who had to be put down, and Kenshin would trust no other with the task.

* * *

[Kurogasa giggled with mad delight. Battousai himself had come for him! The sheer arrogance of it, to come in under his true name, protected only by stage make-up. And the nasty mess at the airport, the two customs agents, the interpreter and the security guards! Did he think that Jin-ei would not be monitoring police scanners, not watching everything and waiting for the pursuit? Let Battousai come! Jin-ei would be ready for him.

Holed up at an abandoned warehouse, broken windows and fallen struts.]

* * *

[Next day, Kenshin starts the hunt. His ki-sense is acutely sensitive, but picking out one ki-signature among the millions of people in the city is almost impossible.]

* * *

[Confrontation. Swords vs Kurogasa's guns. Destruction of property, explosions, stray bystanders killed. Spectacularly unsubtle. Kenshin uses more force than is strictly necessary to end it.]


	2. Fragments

**A/N – **Here are some unfinished dribs and drabs I have recently unearthed from my hard drive.

* * *

**Kata  
****A/N – **Kaoru watches Kenshin practicing his kata.

* * *

Kaoru rarely ever sees Kenshin practicing. In fact, she realises, she rarely ever sees Kenshin in the dojo at all. And so one hot, humid afternoon, when she hears the smooth shush and thump of assured feet on the wooden floors, she sneaks in to peek from just beyond the door.

It _is_ Kenshin, dressed only in his white hakama. He is practicing with his sakabatou, not a bamboo bokken; Kaoru recognises the basic fundamental kata, one of the first she ever learned. He moves smoothly, every movement balanced and controlled, his muscles bunching and relaxing as he advances, lunges, blocks, pivots, and then steps back. His form is perfect; she can see the long, long years of practice in his grace.

For all he looks like a boy sometimes, without his gi he is every bit a grown man. Sweat trails slowly down his chest, sheening his torso; he flicks hair from his eyes with an impatient shake of his head.

She is not sure how long she watches spellbound, as he works his way up from basic drills to more complicated Hiten Mitsurugi kata, until he is moving with swift, unnerving speed, leaping and twisting, crouching perfectly balanced for battoujutsu, drawing his sword so swiftly and cleanly that her eyes have trouble following the movement. It is so devastatingly fast that she can understand why men would call him Battousai, how he could have killed so many with that particular technique.

"When I was a boy, I was much faster, Kaoru-dono," he says quietly, speaking into the hushed silence.

She squeaks, hands flying to her cheeks in embarrassment. He rises slowly from his poised crouch, turns to face her vantage point; there is mingled affection and amusement in his voice, as well as the sadness ever-present when he speaks of his past.

"But Tomoe's – death – left me grievously injured." His eyes darken and fall. "Afterwards, I never quite regained my freakish speed. As I grew older and matured, I gained more muscle and lost some of that flexibility."

"That's what happens," Kaoru manages to answer. "Men are never as flexible as boys."

His gaze returns to hers, and slowly she sees the warm smile fill his eyes at the utterly inane comment.

* * *

**Penance  
A/N – **100 word drabble.

* * *

The midday sun blazed down on the rain-damp, muddy road, the air thick and unpleasantly humid.

Head down, his hair sweat-damp and heavy on his neck, Kenshin pushed on, grimly enduring the heat, the stickiness of sweat, and the ever-circling flies and midges. It was no more than he deserved. In fact, some masochistic part of him welcomed the torment: surely the more difficult his road, the better the chance of atoning for his many sins.

With every step, he moved further and further away from the war, from Kyoto, from the Bakumatsu, and from his life as a killer.

* * *

**Perspective  
A/N - **Two fragments, on the same theme, feeding off each other. I could not bear to axe either one.

* * *

The sakura are in full flower, blossoms scattering with every passing breeze, and Kaoru's thoughts turn inevitably to a time and a place long-gone: to an old-fashioned dojo, wood and sweat and sweet-smelling tatami, and the year she turned eighteen – the year she opened her home and her heart to a drifter with old, wary eyes. She is older, now, and wiser; she thinks she understands some of the shadows behind Kenshin's smile, behind his maddening reluctance to accept the warmth she offered so freely.

She is almost as old, now, as Kenshin was when he first wandered into Tokyo, and the vast gulf between twenty-eight and eighteen seems wider than she could ever have imagined.

It terrifies her to think how readily she offered him everything.

* * *

Her feet shush and thud on the dojo's wooden floors, the contact reassuring and solid. This, if nothing else, remains unchanged – Kamiya Kasshin Ryu, its smooth rhythms, the long-practiced routines calming and familiar. If the Kamiya dojo once knew the rush of a darker, more brutal style, that swordsman is long gone now. She is 28 years old, and she is alone – has been alone for a long time, with only her memories to keep her company.

It's strange to think that she is now the same age Kenshin was, when he first wandered into Tokyo and into her life.


	3. Mirror

**Mirror  
A/N - **Kenshin sees a mirror in a _gai-jin_ child.

* * *

The first time Kenshin saw one of the fabled gai-jin with his own eyes, he knew why people called him demon and made the sign against evil behind his back. An Ishin spy with close ties to the foreigners had turned in Yokohama, and Kenshin had been sent to eliminate him.

It was not easy for Japanese to pass unnoticed in the foreign quarter of Yokohama, that part of the port built by Western merchants, where all the houses were strange monstrosities of brick and mortar, and the windows were covered with glass. Foreigners walked the streets openly, in their strange, constricting clothes, their faces broad and open, their eyes round and pale.

Their hair was all the colours of the rainbow, ranging from straw-coloured to black; there were even, so Uchiyo said, foreigners whose hair was red, just as red as Kenshin's.

Kenshin had not believed it, at first.

And then, ghosting along the alleyways, he looked out into the street and saw a gai-jin child, hand in hand with its Chinese _ayah_, with hair like orange flame and eyes blue as the sky.

Automatically, he stepped back into the shadows, his hands going to his own hair, demon-red, which had so cursed him all his life.

Here, it was considered to be normal.


End file.
